Study: women shier about sharing creative works online

Men are more likely to share their creative work on the Internet than women, …

Men are overrepresented online when it comes to sharing creative work, according to a new report from Northwestern University. Researchers Eszter Hargittai and Gina Walejko found that men were much more likely to post their writings, photos, videos, and other creations on the Internet than women, despite the fact that they were equally likely to participate in such activities.

The two researchers surveyed 1,060 freshmen from the University of Illinois-Chicago and found that about two-thirds of men and two-thirds of women engage in creative activities, regardless of their involvement with the web. 56 percent of the group as a whole said that they had posted some kind of creative work online, the most popular of which being creative writing (blogs, anyone?). Video was the second most popular, which the researchers credit to sites like YouTube for making it easy to upload and share content.

When the groups were separated, however, two-thirds of men said they posted their work online, compared to only half of the women in the group. Further, when Hargittai and Walejko controlled for self-reported digital literacy (comparing only those who believe they have similar levels of 'Net-savviness), the numbers were about even.

"This suggests that the Internet is not an equal playing field for men and women since those with more online abilities—whether perceived or actual—are more likely to contribute online content," Hargittai said in a statement. "It appears that lack of perceived skill is holding women back from putting their creative content out there."

Hargittai acknowledged that there may be additional factors at play that affected the (lack of) participation by women online. For example, women may have greater concerns over privacy than men—I know that my father attempted to instill in me a very deep-seated fear that anything I might post online could lead someone to break into my home and murder me in my sleep (so far, so good). Women may also be less confident in the quality of their work than men, although if this were the case, things may not be as balanced as they apparently are after controlling for perceived digital literacy.

Specifically, men were more than twice as likely to share music that they had created or remixed, and also much more likely to post videos to YouTube. Perhaps this is part of the reason why men are more likely to watch videos posted to YouTube—after all, you can't just watch one Jackass-like skateboard stunt without posting your own response to it, can you?